First baseman Deyvison De Los Santos, who was selected by the Guardians in the Rule 5 Draft back in December, was returned to the Diamondbacks today, per a club announcement. Arizona is not required to add him to the 40-man roster.
De Los Santos, 20, enjoyed a breakout season in 2022 at the age of 19, slashing an impressive .306/.348/.499 in 126 games split between the Single-A, High-A, and Double-A levels that year. He mostly held his own in a return to the Double-A level last year, slashing 254/.297/.431 while crushing 20 home runs in just 481 trips to the plate. That performance was enough for De Los Santos to get plucked from the Diamondbacks organization during the Rule 5 Draft by the Guardians, where he figured to compete for playing time with top first base prospect Kyle Manzardo on a roster in desperate need of additional pop.
The news comes as something of a surprise following the club’s decision to reassign Manzardo to minor league camp earlier this week, which seemingly opened the door for De Los Santos to be the club’s Opening Day starter at first base. That hasn’t come to pass, however, as Cleveland clearly determined that De Los Santos would not make the club’s Opening Day roster and instead opted to send the 20-year-old back to his original organization.
The move seems to leave slugger Josh Naylor to take over first base duties on Opening Day. A career .270/.325/.439 hitter who posted a career-best 128 wRC+ last season, there’s little question that the 26-year-old is up to the task. With that being said, Naylor appeared poised to be slotted into the club’s DH spot on a regular basis this season. That may still end up being the case assuming Mazardo makes his way to the majors later this year, but as things stand the club instead appears likely to rely on the likes of Will Brennan and Estevan Florial at DH to open the season.
As for De Los Santos, he’ll return to the Diamondbacks organization and likely begin the season in the upper minors. With veterans Christian Walker and Joc Pederson slated for the lion’s share of playing time at first base and DH this year, it’s unclear if De Los Santos will have much of an opportunity to reach the majors this season. With that being said, both Walker and Pederson are set to hit free agency after the 2024 season, so a strong showing from De Los Santos in the upper minors this year could put him in line to impact the club as soon as 2025.
Naylor? I barely knew her!
Sounds more like a joke for Curleywasthesmartstooge…
Worked better with Doug Fister.
Ewwwww!
Kinda shocked no one wanted to take a chance on him.
Pretty bad plate discipline?
Hard to give a 26 man roster spot to player with less than 500 PA’s at AA for an entire season on a team with playoff aspirations. However this same team is likely giving that roster spot to Estevan Florial so who knows…
Florial was pretty impressive in AAA last season
They must think they can compete this year which tells me they invested in barrels of magic pixie dust.
I wasn’t thinking about that but you’re right he was first offered on waivers right? Or does he go back to the original team without being offered to the other 29 teams?
If he could’ve been claimed by anyone it is surprising a team that’s in a total rebuild didn’t take a shot. Even if he isn’t ML ready right now he’s one of those legitimate prospects who’s rule-5 eligible due to the technicality that the clock starts when they’re 16 (or whatever in this case) vs guys who aren’t even drafted until 18-22. I’m not sure he’ll make the majors this season but would not be shocked at all if he’s a massive power threat in a couple years! You’d think someone like Oakland would’ve been interested enough… I mean seriously who do they need that roster spot for? lol
If he’s being sent back to the Diamondbacks, then he evidently has already cleared waivers. Waiver placements in MLB don’t usually get official announcements, just reports from media “insiders.”
I Wonder how announce waivers to teams, espically before the internet? Did teams get faxes everyday? Was someones job with the MLB to make phones callea to teams daily to update then with information like waivers? Did the have people call the mkb everyday asking.
No, he just gets offered back to his original team for like $50K. No brainer buyback. Other teams could only trade for him.
That’s incorrect. Other teams would have had the chance to claim him but he still would have been subject to the Rule 5 guidelines.
No one claimed him so he’s back with the Diamondbacks.
The first rule 5 draft return of the spring (I think). There will likely be more, but the small number of picks in the first place might change that.
For a team thats biggest investment of the offseason was Hedges, lmao, they probably could’ve stashed DeLosSantos on the bench next to him. 3rd place in central is likely well beyond their reach anyway
Looks like he’s going back to the NL West Deyvison.
There was never a question of who would be getting the primary first base duties this season. It was always Naylor’s job.
True. Not sure what the author is thinking.
He doesn’t think
Excellent!
May be a stupid question, but how is a 20 year old available in the rule 5 draft? Can’t sign until 16 and 5 years after that right?
Right? No idea.
Maybe he’s “Dominican” age. A 20-year old prospect who will turn 26 this year.
It’s after five professional seasons, so since he signed at age 16 that technically would have been his first pro season. His age 17, 18, 19, and 20 seasons would have been the next four.
He just hasn’t turned 21 yet because he was born in June.
So he signed in June and that counted as a full year? Why is there not more 20 year olds eligible then?
He signed in July of 2019, but yeah it counted as a season. Technically the rule is for professional seasons (even partial ones), not just full seasons.
He signed when the international signing period still opened in July instead of January like it is now, so since he had just turned 16 before signing I’d imagine that’s why he’s younger than most Rule 5 picks who were presumably a few months past turning 16 when they signed.
With that being said, several times…
He’s a beast, but just not ready. Not sure how he was Rule 5 eligible at 20. Another year or so in the minors and he’ll be up & bopping. But a year on CLE’s bench could have really set him back.
He signed at 16 and was born in June of 2003, so the summer of 2019 when he signed would have technically been his first pro season. It’s the same as a player drafted; even their partial first season counts toward their Rule 5 eligibility.
2019-2023 were the five seasons until he was eligible, he just hasn’t turned 21 yet because of that summer birthday.
Naylor’s getting old– for the Guardians/ / he was being shopped over the winter
I’ll reiterate again that the guardians are weird, they literally have no pop in their lineup aside from a few players and sending manzardo down was obvious service time manipulation. They won’t win a whole lot of games and the direction they seem to be taking is ridiculous. Everyone in the division aside from the White Sox got way better while the guardians sit on their hands and do nothing while acting as if they’ll be better than last years club that was pretty bad, yet they won’t take the direction of rebuilding and letting the kids like manzardo play. They should have traded Bieber and got a decent haul for him for a couple prospects and a MLB player that could hold the line right now. It’s sad how this team hasn’t even tried to do anything to show that they are a competitive team or at least show, hey we will be rebuilding to try and be a good competitive team in the future. I’m sorry guardians fans, y’all deserve better.
They won 92 games in 2022 with basically the same lineup.
“Everyone in the division, aside from the White Sox, got way better.” LOL. That’s hysterical. Who did the Twins add that make them “way better”? Or the Royals/Tigers?
Tigers are getting better by their prospects getting experience. Both Greene and Torkelson got better as the season progressed. Skubal impressed. Mize is healthy. Olsen established himself. They added Maeda and Flaherty, and have Manning and Gibson-Long waiting at AAA. They added more depth to the bullpen with Miller and Chafin. Offense has added a solid but unspectacular Canha and Urshela. If they finally get tired of Baez, they have Kreidler waiting at AAA. From the farm, they have added Keith and Meadows.
To sum up, they have the deepest pitching staff in the league, and a young lineup that is likely to improve during the year. They could use one more solid bat, but they are definitely improved.
The Tigers pitching depth may be a mirage. Several of those guys have serious injury histories, and several others have not been effective. Lots of potential if everything goes right and their starters stay off the IL.
Too many AL Central teams need everything to go right to be a serious post season threat or even contend in the AL Central.
This is actually good for him he still has top 50 prospect upside but it was clear as day he needs another season at Double A let alone have him jump to the majors
Did they have to pay a restocking fee?
Florial and Brennan at DH? Ouch
DH’ing Florial makes about as much sense as giving IKF $15 mill
Cron is a FA that might be a good fit in Cleveland.
I think the G’s are committed to playing their young guys.
Will Brennan, who hit nearly half (5) of the 11 total home runs the Guardians starting outfielders hit last season. That’s not the first week or even the first month of the season, it’s the entire season.
Bieber being hurt last season really lowered his trade value and Cleveland tends not to trade player in situations like that which leaves him as a trade deadline candidate. Manzardo has under 100 games at AAA with only average readily. Also, he is a lefty hitter which Cleveland is over loaded with. Service time manipulation probably ranks third. That said, he should be up by summer. And yes, they obviously do need much more hitting production. Hopefully Vogt is more openminded to how to use his hitters.
Someone needs to keep the position warm for Chance DeLauters…
Chase
DeLauter
Kids got a ton of potential and he’s only going to get better. Really impressed Cleveland with his cup of tea. Power is absolutely real. Just needs to find ample playing time as he progresses through his development years. I did think he had an interesting chance to stick though, but in my own selfish ways I’m glad he didn’t.
NO NO NO. Rule 5 players are waiver exempt. They have to be offered back to the team they came from. This has been a rule forever so why the confusion?
Rule 5 players go through waivers before being offered back to their original team. If claimed, rule 5 restrictions still apply. Look it up.
Dumb. They should have sent Fry to AAA to catch every day and kept De Los Santos. Just another huge mistake by this organization to go with Caminero, Nolan Jones, Yandy Diaz, Harold Ramirez, Benson, and Yanier Diaz.
I like having Fry as a right handed bat off the bench, but I probably would have sent him or Brennan down if it meant keeping De Los Santos. Who knows if he would have been good enough to keep around all year, but it feels incredibly pointless to have gone through all that while also giving him outfield reps, just to return him anyway. As a 20 year old in spring training, I’m not really sure what else he needed to show them to stick on the roster. Of course he’ll have growing pains — they knew that when they picked him.
It just doesn’t make any sense to have kept Manzardo down if you weren’t going to keep De Los Santos, and I know it’s definitely just playing the service time game but they could have at least pretended to have a real reason for doing it.
Understandable. He is interesting and has big power but he is also very young, very raw and has no defensive value.
Florial is raw too and might never get better but at least he has defensive and baserunning value so you can use him as a pinch runner, defensive sub and so on.
De Los Santos on the other hand has to hit and him hitting 220 with a 290 obp with an occasional homer is not worth blocking a roster spot when he can only play 1b/dh